I have been thinking about this a lot, so this is a handful of semi-thought-out points so I don't have to actually watch the show and write something more put together.
Caveats:
I am absolutely fascinated by 9-1-1 fandom's relationship to masculinity and how unnuanced it seems. I also want to be clear that I don't think anyone is doing this on purpose, but that it's coming out of an interesting cultural context around masculinity and queerness.
Buck's Bisexuality and Straight White Masculinity
I saw a gifset of Oliver Stark talking about how the show has always had queer characters, but people are upset about Buck being queer. Surely someone somewhere in this fandom has written about how that's about masculinity. Masculinity, particularly straight white masculinity, has such a foundation of (a) opposition to femininity and (b) power, specifically power over others, and that includes being the dominant sexual partner. People have spent six seasons getting to know Buck as a big manly man who has sex with hot girls. It's okay that he wears pink and has emotional reactions to things because he's still big and manly. But kissing men and having sex with men is something women do, and that's a real step too far in the mainstream construction of acceptable masculinity. I expect it's made even worse by the fact that Tommy is also a big manly man and he kisses Buck first; not only is Buck having sex with a man, but now they have to contend with the fact that maybe he's the one sucking cock and getting fucked. For people who have looked at or up to, or identified with, Buck and his masculinity, it's a lot easier to just get mad about it than to re-examine their ideas about what it means to be a man.
A Sidenote About Buck and Whiteness
I read a lot of fic before I ever looked up what the characters looked like, and I was very surprised to learn that Buck is extremely not blonde. His hair is barely even lighter than Eddie's. And yet so much fic calls him blonde. I mentioned this on Twitter, and someone said she's seen Black women talking about white people describing people as blonde as being about whiteness, not about actual hair color. So now every time I read someone calling Buck blonde, I both think they don't know what that word means and am acutely aware that what they're really doing, probably unconsciously, is emphasizing that he's white.
The Abundance of "Girl Dad" Fic
I loathe the term "girl dad." It is ridiculously and unnecessarily gendered and reinforces the idea that parents can/should treat their kids differently based on their gender. I am also deeply fascinated by how much of the Buck accidental baby acquisition, Buck and Eddie adopt a child, and even Buck and Tommy adopt a child fic is about Buck having a daughter, much of which is tagged, summarized, or noted with some variation of "girl dad." I expect at least part of this is about defining masculinity by the ways it contrasts and interacts with femininity. Buck is still a big manly man, so it's okay when he's super sweet to a little girl. And there's probably some wish fulfillment from women whose dads were not that kind of sweet and gentle with them, or whose partners aren't that way with their children. But, again, this isn't really taking a nuanced look at masculinity. It's okay because they're girls, but where is the fic about Buck being that kind of gentle and adoring about a little boy? I'm pretty sure them parenting a(nother) boy isn't interesting to people the way the contrast of their masculinity with the femininity of a little girl is because it's still very much about the acceptable bounds of masculinity.
Eddie's Sexuality
I am so deeply fascinated by how much people have decided that Eddie is gay. I mean, not that he couldn't be, but that they don't think bisexual is even a possibility. From the outside, I have a lot of questions about how much that's supported by the text. I really wonder how much of it is a combination of him being pretty with a tendency toward emotional repression and catty remarks, combined with his failed relationships with women, and that's not a collection of traits we accept in straight men. But we're talking about a guy with PTSD and Catholic guilt who is single parenting a special needs child, and who married the first girl he fell in love with, was separated from her for years, then they reconnected, then she told him she wanted a divorce, and then she died. I just don't think homosexuality is the only possible explanation for his relationship issues.
I know there might have been more character development this season that I haven't watched clips of, but I have real issues with the way fic deals with Eddie's feelings for Shannon. I've read a lot of it about how they never really loved each other and it never could have worked and it was always a mistake. Which, okay, maybe it never would have worked out. But it seemed very clear to me from the clips I watched that Eddie's perspective was very much that he truly loved her. When fandom dismisses that, it doesn't seem like they're respecting or representing who the character actually is. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a deeply important relationship to him. Part of why I'm so sensitive to this because I've been in fandom for 25+ years, and I'm very, very familiar with fandom's "ew, a woman is in the way of our ship" brand of misogyny. To be fair to this fandom, (a) when they hate a character, they do tag the fic "[character name] bashing" so it's easy to avoid, and (b) I've run into a handful of things tagged "Tommy bashing," so they're not confining it to hating women who are in the way of their ship.
Conclusion: Old Fangirl Yells At Cloud
I'm not sure I want to watch seven seasons of this show to write fic out of spite (I already watched eight seasons of House so I could more accurately side-eye takes on Tumblr out of spite earlier this year), but if I did, I would definitely be doing something different from what the rest of this fandom seems to be doing. I'm not sure if fandom has really changed or if it's an effect of being An Old now, but it seems like a lot of popular fandoms are getting less connected to the source material and more rigid about gender roles, both of which are disappointing to me.
Caveats:
- I have not watched the show. I have read a lot of fic, watched some clips on YouTube, and backread a couple of Tumblrs, but not watched the actual show. Probably there are things in here that I would have a different opinion about if I did.
- I am a #FannishRebel4Life. The phrasing of that is mostly a joke, but I have a long history of being a rebel when it comes to fandom. Sometimes that means I see something and think "obviously A" and then find out that everyone else's perspective on it is "obviously NotA"; sometimes it means that I see everyone approaching something one way and want to do a different thing out of contrariness.
I am absolutely fascinated by 9-1-1 fandom's relationship to masculinity and how unnuanced it seems. I also want to be clear that I don't think anyone is doing this on purpose, but that it's coming out of an interesting cultural context around masculinity and queerness.
Buck's Bisexuality and Straight White Masculinity
I saw a gifset of Oliver Stark talking about how the show has always had queer characters, but people are upset about Buck being queer. Surely someone somewhere in this fandom has written about how that's about masculinity. Masculinity, particularly straight white masculinity, has such a foundation of (a) opposition to femininity and (b) power, specifically power over others, and that includes being the dominant sexual partner. People have spent six seasons getting to know Buck as a big manly man who has sex with hot girls. It's okay that he wears pink and has emotional reactions to things because he's still big and manly. But kissing men and having sex with men is something women do, and that's a real step too far in the mainstream construction of acceptable masculinity. I expect it's made even worse by the fact that Tommy is also a big manly man and he kisses Buck first; not only is Buck having sex with a man, but now they have to contend with the fact that maybe he's the one sucking cock and getting fucked. For people who have looked at or up to, or identified with, Buck and his masculinity, it's a lot easier to just get mad about it than to re-examine their ideas about what it means to be a man.
A Sidenote About Buck and Whiteness
I read a lot of fic before I ever looked up what the characters looked like, and I was very surprised to learn that Buck is extremely not blonde. His hair is barely even lighter than Eddie's. And yet so much fic calls him blonde. I mentioned this on Twitter, and someone said she's seen Black women talking about white people describing people as blonde as being about whiteness, not about actual hair color. So now every time I read someone calling Buck blonde, I both think they don't know what that word means and am acutely aware that what they're really doing, probably unconsciously, is emphasizing that he's white.
The Abundance of "Girl Dad" Fic
I loathe the term "girl dad." It is ridiculously and unnecessarily gendered and reinforces the idea that parents can/should treat their kids differently based on their gender. I am also deeply fascinated by how much of the Buck accidental baby acquisition, Buck and Eddie adopt a child, and even Buck and Tommy adopt a child fic is about Buck having a daughter, much of which is tagged, summarized, or noted with some variation of "girl dad." I expect at least part of this is about defining masculinity by the ways it contrasts and interacts with femininity. Buck is still a big manly man, so it's okay when he's super sweet to a little girl. And there's probably some wish fulfillment from women whose dads were not that kind of sweet and gentle with them, or whose partners aren't that way with their children. But, again, this isn't really taking a nuanced look at masculinity. It's okay because they're girls, but where is the fic about Buck being that kind of gentle and adoring about a little boy? I'm pretty sure them parenting a(nother) boy isn't interesting to people the way the contrast of their masculinity with the femininity of a little girl is because it's still very much about the acceptable bounds of masculinity.
Eddie's Sexuality
I am so deeply fascinated by how much people have decided that Eddie is gay. I mean, not that he couldn't be, but that they don't think bisexual is even a possibility. From the outside, I have a lot of questions about how much that's supported by the text. I really wonder how much of it is a combination of him being pretty with a tendency toward emotional repression and catty remarks, combined with his failed relationships with women, and that's not a collection of traits we accept in straight men. But we're talking about a guy with PTSD and Catholic guilt who is single parenting a special needs child, and who married the first girl he fell in love with, was separated from her for years, then they reconnected, then she told him she wanted a divorce, and then she died. I just don't think homosexuality is the only possible explanation for his relationship issues.
I know there might have been more character development this season that I haven't watched clips of, but I have real issues with the way fic deals with Eddie's feelings for Shannon. I've read a lot of it about how they never really loved each other and it never could have worked and it was always a mistake. Which, okay, maybe it never would have worked out. But it seemed very clear to me from the clips I watched that Eddie's perspective was very much that he truly loved her. When fandom dismisses that, it doesn't seem like they're respecting or representing who the character actually is. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a deeply important relationship to him. Part of why I'm so sensitive to this because I've been in fandom for 25+ years, and I'm very, very familiar with fandom's "ew, a woman is in the way of our ship" brand of misogyny. To be fair to this fandom, (a) when they hate a character, they do tag the fic "[character name] bashing" so it's easy to avoid, and (b) I've run into a handful of things tagged "Tommy bashing," so they're not confining it to hating women who are in the way of their ship.
Conclusion: Old Fangirl Yells At Cloud
I'm not sure I want to watch seven seasons of this show to write fic out of spite (I already watched eight seasons of House so I could more accurately side-eye takes on Tumblr out of spite earlier this year), but if I did, I would definitely be doing something different from what the rest of this fandom seems to be doing. I'm not sure if fandom has really changed or if it's an effect of being An Old now, but it seems like a lot of popular fandoms are getting less connected to the source material and more rigid about gender roles, both of which are disappointing to me.